Victor? Hugo!
by Zelofheda
Summary: Betrayal. That was a word that Guy knew, a word that had the power to stir the deepest, darkest emotions inside him. He didn't think he'd ever know the word forgiveness.


My entry for Fiction Challenge #1 at the Armitage Army Forum

Challenge: The boat trip home, stories about the journey home from the Holy Land, immediately following the finale of series 2

Disclaimer: Guy of Gisborne and Sheriff Vasey belong to Robin Hood BBC; I am borrowing them only for entertainment purposes with no intent to profit.

"My lord?"

Guy raised his head from contemplating the waves and looked at the person who had spoken to him. At first he thought it was a man, slender and with short hair, but then he noticed the dress and realized it wasn't.

"Sir Bernard would like to speak to you," she said.

Guy followed her gaze to where the Knight Templar was huddled on a pallet. He looked worse then the Sheriff did, but by the fact that he was missing an arm and was wearing various other bandages, Guy could guess it wasn't seasickness that had brought him so low.

"You wanted to see me," Guy said, kneeling down. The woman knelt down on the other side, and Guy noticed her wrists were chained together.

"I need your help," Bernard wheezed. "I cannot do it myself."

"What?" Guy asked.

"Punish her," Bernard said. "Take this belt. Ten lashes."

Guy waited for an explanation.

"I touched him by accident," the woman said. "He took a vow never to touch a woman. My hand slipped when I was offering him water."

"She betrayed me," Bernard wheezed. "All of us…"

Betrayal. That was a word that Guy knew, a word that had the power to stir the deepest, darkest emotions inside him. He straightened up and reached for the Templar's belt. Across from him, the woman lowered her eyes, then stood up and turned around, undoing the fastenings of her dress. Her movements were awkward, because of her manacles, but she managed to pull it open in the back. Guy could see that she'd been flogged before; her back was crisscrossed with half-healed welts.

The woman leaned on the railing as Guy came around the pallet. Betrayal. As he raised the belt for the first lash, he thought of Marian. Marian had betrayed him, letting him believe that there was a chance she'd love him back, that he could win her. Betrayal like that deserved punishment, but punishment like a whipping, not anything worse. If only he'd merely flogged Marian …

The woman shuddered each time Guy brought the belt down on her back, but made no sound until the end. The last two lashes made her cry out through gritted teeth, but she cut off her screams as soon as she could. When the whipping was over, she dropped to the deck and cowered there, trembling.

Guy returned the belt to its owner, and Bernard grunted his thanks, then asked, "Would you … do something else … for me?"

Expecting a simple request, Guy asked, "What?"

"The woman must be … taken to a … nunnery," the knight explained. "I will not live … to see dry land."

"I should deliver her?" Guy guessed. Bernard nodded.

"Which nunnery?"

"It doesn't matter now."

Guy hesitated. He wasn't good with nuns.

"Got money. Horses, too. All yours, if you take her."

Vasey would have perked up at the mention of horses alone, let alone money, but Vasey was below deck, heaving into a bucket. Well. Once they reached land again, Vasey could take over, and in the meantime, the woman was probably not in any condition to be a bother. Guy shrugged, Bernard reached out his remaining hand, and Guy shook it.

"Here," Bernard wheezed, and reached for a leather pouch at his side. It was fat and heavy with coins. Vasey would have hefted it appreciatively; Guy took it and merely nodded.

"Key's in there," the knight said, then raised his voice. "Woman!"

Guy glanced over to where the woman had recovered enough to fumble her dress back into place. When she'd finished, she wiped her sleeve across her eyes, then came over and knelt down where she'd been earlier. She was mumbling something, but Guy couldn't hear what.

"Stop trying to forgive me!" Bernard commanded. "Don't want it!"

"I have already forgiven you," the woman said, her voice still shaky. "Now I'm praying for your soul."

Bernard made a frustrated noise.

"I need to say it," the woman went on, unperturbed. Then she lifted her head and looked directly into Guy's eyes. "I forgive you."

Guy froze in shock. Did she know about his unforgiveable sin? How could she be forgiving him? As though hearing his unspoken question, she said, "For flogging me. Although you look as though you have need of forgiveness for other sins, too."

"We all do, " Bernard hissed. "But _your _words and … _your_ prayers … mean nothing!"

The woman sighed. "Don't they? Then why are you sending me to a nunnery where I'll be doing nothing for the rest of my life but praying?"

"Leave me in peace, woman," Bernard growled in defeat, and Guy almost smiled.

The woman went to the other end of the boat, and when it became obvious that Bernard had fallen asleep, Guy joined her.

"He gave you the key, didn't he?" she asked, indicating her chained wrists.

Guy nodded. "What's your name?"

"Hugo," she said, and smiled at Guy's surprise. "That was the name I went by for five years. Brother Hugo, clergyman in the Order of the Temple."

"You pretended to be a man," Guy said, and understood now why Bernard had spoken of betrayal. Many Knights Templar took vows never to touch a woman, not even a member of their own family. They must have been incensed to find that one had been living among them for years.

"A man of God," she said. "I loved it, you know, actually _doing_ things. It was like getting out and working in a garden as opposed to just talking about it by the fireside. But then I was wounded, and they found out. They flogged me. They even made me wear a dress again."

She grinned. "But I'm forgiving them. In fact, I've already forgiven them for the flogging. The dress part is a bit more painful."

Guy couldn't help smiling back, if only at this Hugo's strange sense of humour.

"What's your real name?" he asked.

"I've forgotten. I'll take the name Sister Hugo when I become a nun." She grinned again. "Cecily de Rainault. And yours?"

"Sir Guy of Gisborne," Guy said, then blurted out, "How can you forgive them?"

"I can, because I want forgiveness myself. The more we forgive others, the better chance we have of being forgiven ourselves. What I did was wrong. I had my reasons, but it was still lying and it was still deceiving. And as for the actual "how," I'll tell you a secret, Sir Guy. The more often you say "I forgive you," the more you find you mean it. Even if you're only repeating the words at the beginning. Eventually, it bores into your heart like a drill through wood and the truth pours in."

Guy grimaced. "There's no forgiveness for some sins, no matter how often you forgive others."

"Isn't there?" Cecily asked. "Did not the Lord Himself say, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors? He didn't say only the small debts, the unimportant ones."

Guy turned away, but he wondered. Could it be that he was wrong and Cecily was right? He hadn't held back during the flogging, and yet she'd forgiven him. She'd even smiled at him, later. And if she, a mere mortal, could do that much, then how much more … Guy shook his head. Miracles didn't happen, not to _him_.

But that night, Guy dreamed of the chapel in Nottingham Castle, dark until the priest lit a candle. He saw that the priest was Brother Hugo, and with the candlelight came a feeling of hope. It was the first night that he hadn't dreamed of Marian and his great guilt.

Cecily was waiting for him on deck when he came up, and he experienced the same hope in her presence that he remembered from the dream.

"He's dead," she said. "Would you help me with the body?"

Guy strode over to where Bernard lay. Cecily had already brought up a hammock from below; it was spread out next to the pallet. Now she waited until Guy had moved the body onto it, then began to sew the canvas shut.

"Stop," Guy commanded, and Cecily looked up. His decision was made. He could not let her go to a convent. Even if he could not fully believe in her words, not just yet, he had to keep her nearby. Her presence would bore into his heart like a drill through wood, and one day … one day, he'd be able to forgive Marian, perhaps even others, enough to be forgiven himself.

Guy pulled Bernard free of the shroud, then stripped off the man's clothes, starting with his boots. When he'd finished, he gathered the pilfered clothing into a ball and tossed it at Cecily. "Get dressed in these. You're coming to Nottingham with us."

When she looked at him in confusion, he pulled the key from his pouch and reached for her manacles. "Brother Hugo."


End file.
